One of the more startling things I encounter in grad school is the broadly held belief in a renascence of belief. This is either presented as inevitable or desirable, and in all cases it is terrible fashionable to think that some sort of religious feeling is necessary for meaningful human life. Authorities are generally what is used to stabilize whatever flimsy argument is being put forth about modern man’s ache for fullness: Rousseau, Bellah, Taylor, Hegel, et cetera. Myself, I don’t ache for a Jesus-plenum. In fact, being around all this lax chatter has made me positively anti-religious — more so than I have been since I ditched my faith as a teenager. I find theological pronouncements obnoxious, and the way that many of the radical hipsters seek to meld political engagement with religious sentiment I find disgusting.
So, it was with great pleasure that I read Gallup’s recent press release on the trend toward decline in religious belief in America. Religion shows a long-term decline; the number of non-religious people is rising — 1 in 10 at this point, more or less; the world becomes disenchanted. Oh well. Get over the loss of belief and do something worthwhile.
I remember seeing in polls the numbers of religious people increase after 9/11. Certain crises provoke a religious outpouring, like 9/11. But collapses in financing and housing and whatnot provoke something entirely different.
But collapses in financing and housing and whatnot provoke something entirely different.
Well, except, I suppose after the repeated assaults on the working classes pace the 70’s. As the working class movements were crushed, people turned to religion in droves for consolation too.
Hopefully, people don’t turn to religion now as austerity measures get steeper; perhaps we’ll see more working class militancy in the next few years. At least, I hope so.
Actually George, the last (significant) uptick in the self-identified Xtian meter was in the late 90’s, if the Gallup polls are any indication.
I guess I was going on the information I’ve gotten from books like What’s the Matter with Kansas. It seems odd though. Perhaps the ideological modes have cast the issues of religiosity in more heightened terms while religion was actually on a gradual decline as the Gallup polls indicate.
Huh, that’s interesting. There has maybe been an increase in the amount and intensity of Christian media figures? But I dunno. I wonder where, why or how Thomas Frank came up with that argument?
The whole idea for that book comes from Marx, but as for the specific data it was based on the 2004 election.
He was using the rhetoric of the election or specific data? And did he tie it into other trends? It might be that religious observance has become broader in certain regions while declining in others, too.
A late comment, but four points:
1. I personally find the atheism of people like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, possibly Daniel Dennett, etc., just as annoying as evangelicals and their apologists, and they are probably just as dangerous. The way a number of secularists have jumped on the “War on Terror” bandwagon is actually a good contemporary example of how unreflective rationality can be quite destructive. These people might have done a good job of questioning their religious beliefs, but if that questioning doesn’t extend to their political and social beliefs, then what good is being secular?
2. The worst thing I can say about evangelicals is that they elected George Bush. Apart from this, having lived in both very religious and very secular parts of the country, I can’t say that there is much difference between them in terms of how people live and the decisions they make on a daily basis. Another way of putting it is: if secular people are no more or less likely to question the conditions of the society around them — and I don’t think they are — then who gives a shit if they’re atheists? What good are they?
3. I could be mistaken, but I believe reading somewhere that the largest segment of the anti-war movement (ineffectual as it was) in America came out of church groups, not the urban left, and that bringing these groups into the mainstream political process was a key part of Obama’s campaign strategy. Conversely, one might want to look at Hitchens’ 2003 article “Pious Nonsense: The unholy ‘Christian’ case against war” (http://www.slate.com/id/2079860/) to see secular rationality in its full glory.
4. My observation has been that atheists tend to have a very poor understanding of religious belief and behavior, tending toward a kind of nerdy, over-literal, contextless evaluation of their written beliefs and historical actions, over-emphasizing the extent that religion is really about faith and belief. I suspect the reality is that the religious, just like most people, don’t necessarily waste a lot of time with faith or belief. A good example of this is the evangelical movement and the mega-church phenomenon. I read an article that analyzed these big congregations, and what they found was that tended to attract a lot of people who were single, or from broken families, or who were new to the areas where they were living. This is also why megachures tend to be centered on areas of rapid development and population growth — they’re destinations for people who have emigrated from their families and original communities, and they use a church to get a social foothold in new areas. Additionally, you also see religious people use the vocabulary of religious belief to think about (and justify) a wide variety of conclusions about things, kind of like a cipher. It injects a bias, for sure, but so does the abject scientism of vulgar atheists.
Anyway, I think atheists and secular people in general are highly over-rated. That there are more of them now reassures me of nothing.
I dunno. I wouldn’t want to make too big a deal of a survey, but apparently, in the States at least, people who attend church services regularly are more likely to think that it is alright to torture somebody. For instance. But you’re right, Hitchens and the rest of the atheistic noxious crowd are quite toxic.
But mainly the target of this post were the people I’ve been coming across more and more lately — sort of spiritually deprived elites who claim to be aching for some sort of mystical religious certainty. They’ll locate such experience in whatever place than can find it: Badiou’s work, the idea of a messianic proletariat, whatever. The whole goal of this is not to achieve a critical understanding or engagement with one’s historical situation, but to close off the questions that hit foundations and proceed forward with platitudes. It’s a sort of inverted ataraxia: instead of shaking things to the core and then proceeding with everything busted up and known to be such, certain principles are merely taken for granted, and from them an entire manner of living is derived.
But I don’t think secularism and atheism are over-rated in the least. I just think there are some schmuckish asshat atheists who happen to to be given op-ed pages.